RX comics on Main st is one of my favorite shops in the universe. Next to RX is a great used book store called Pulpfiction— with a nice graphic novella section.
Another great comic store in Vancouver is Lucky’s — They have a lot more small books and have a good young readers section and often put on comic signings.
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
There's an interesting article over at Highline Magazine about a lost hiker named George Joachim whose subsequent behavior in the landscape was so spatially unexpected that he eluded discovery for ten days.
He was a "behavioral outlier," we read, and his mathematically unpredictable actions forced a revision of what is, in effect, the search algorithm used by Parks Canada for tracking human beings in the wild.
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
From the story:
Parks Canada uses a statistical model to help predict where the lost person might be. The model uses data collected from similar lost person cases to learn the size and location of the search area. Combining the experience of the searchers and research on the lost person, the model then suggests the likelihood the person will be in various locations based on how previous people in their situation have behaved.
Joachim unintentionally misled searchers by listing his destination incorrectly in the climber’s registry, and then behaved so unlike other people previously have in his circumstance that he was repeatedly missed in the search. Parks Canada’s search and rescue community considers his case a valuable learning experience and have since tweaked search protocols to account for other behavioral outliers.
Put another way, this hiker exceeded the agent-based mathematical model used to track him. As a result, his searchers were forced to develop what the author calls the "Joachim profile," a kind of makeshift simulation that, in theory, should have been able to predict where he'd pop up next.
The idea that human movement through the wilderness corresponds—or not, as the case may be—to a mathematical sorting algorithm is fascinating, especially when that model diverges so drastically from what a person really does out there.
In fact, it's worth speculating that it is precisely in this divergence from accepted mathematical models of landscape use where we can find a truer or more "wild" experience of the terrain—as if certain activities can be so truly "wild" that no known algorithm is capable of describing them.
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
In any case, it's by no means the world's most gripping story of human survival, but it's a great example of human landscape expectations and the limits of abstract modeling. Click over to Highline to read the whole thing.
Freedom of speech and nonviolence are central to liberal progressivism, and they are utilized in a way that completely disarms the marginalized and gives those already in power the majority influence of what and how to change.
'The truly high-end residential developments of tomorrow will be electromagnetically fortified, impervious to drones, and, unless you've been invited there, impossible for your cars and cellphones even to find.'
It's hardly surprising to read that drones can be repurposed as burglars' tools; at this point, take any activity, add a drone, and you, too, can have a news story (or Kickstarter) dedicated to the result.
"Why not send an inexpensive drone, snoop in your windows, see if you have any pets, see if you have any expensive electronics, maybe find out if you have any jewelry hanging around," a security expert wonders aloud to Hawaii's KITV, describing what he sees as the future of burglary. Burglars "can do all that with a drone without ever stepping a foot on your property line."
"So what's a homeowner to do?" the TV station asks.
They suggest following the drone back to its owner, who, due both to battery life and signal range, will be nearby; or even installing "new expensive high-tech drone detection systems that claim to detect the sounds of a drone's propellers." This is absurd—suggesting that some sort of drone alarm will go off at 3am, driving you out of bed—but it's such a perfectly surreal vision of the suburbs of tomorrow.
Fortifying our homes against drone incursion will be the next bull market in security: whole subdivisions designed to thwart drone flights, marketed to potential homeowners specifically for that very reason.
You go home for the weekend to visit your parents where, rather than being enlisted to mow the lawn or clean the gutters, you're sent you out on drone duty, installing perimeter defenses or some sort of jamming blanket, an electromagnetically-active geotextile disguised beneath the mulch. Complex nets and spiderweb-like antennas go on sale at Home Depot, perfect for snaring drone rotors and leading to an explosion in suburban bird deaths.
This news comes simultaneously with a story in Forbes, where we read that drone manufacturer DJI is implementing a GPS block on its products: they will no longer be able to fly within 15.5 miles of the White House.
The company is issuing "a mandatory firmware update to all Phantom drones that will restrict flight within a 15.5 mile radius centered around downtown Washington D.C. Pilots looking to operate their Phantom drone will not be able to take off or fly within the no-fly-zone."
Based off a drone’s GPS coordinates, the technology to geo-fence drones from entering a particular airspace, especially around major airports, has been around in Phantoms since early last year. The new update will add more airports to its no-fly-zone database as the 709 no-fly-zones already in the Phantom’s flight controller software will expand to more than 10,000, with additional restrictions added to prevent flight across national borders.
This is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that firmware updates and geography now work together to disable entire classes of products within a given zone or GPS range. Put another way, drones today—but what tomorrow?
Geofencing or "locationized" firearms have already been discussed as a possible future form of gun control, for example, and it would not be at all surprising to see "locationized" smartphones or geofenced cameras becoming a thing in the next few years.
All a government (or criminal syndicate) would have to do is release a (malicious) firmware update, temporarily shutting down certain types of electronics within range of, say, a presidential inauguration (or a bank heist).
More to the point of this post, however, GPS-based geofencing will also become part of the electromagnetic armature of future residential developments, a new, invisible layer of security for those who are willing to pay for it.
Think, for example, of the extraordinary geographic dazzle effects used by government buildings to camouflage their real-world locations: as Dana Priest and William Arkin wrote for The Washington Post back in 2012, "most people don't realize when they're nearing the epicenter of Fort Meade's, even when the GPS on their car dashboard suddenly begins giving incorrect directions, trapping the driver in a series of U-turns, because the government is jamming all nearby signals."
If half the point of living in the suburbs is to obtain a certain level of privacy, personal safety, and peace of mind, then it is hardly science fiction to suggest that the electromagnetic fortification of suburbia is on the immediate horizon.
You won't just turn on a burglar alarm with your handy smartphone app; you'll also switch on signal-jamming networks hidden in the trees or a location-scrambling geofence camouflaged as a garden gnome at the edge of your well-mown lawn. Drones, dazzled by invisible waves of unpredictable geographic information, will perform U-turns or sudden dives, even racing off to a pre-ordained security cage where they can be pulled from the air and disabled.
The truly high-end residential developments of tomorrow will be electromagnetically fortified, impervious to drones, and, unless you've been invited there, impossible for your cars and cellphones even to find.
I’m just gonna reblog this again because it’s one of my favorite pictures ever.
That girl in the chair seems like such a badass I bet she was the leader of the crew.
I want to write about these girls.
When I was a teenager my mother found my grandmother’s (her mother) school scrapbook. It included things like photos, notes, and a two page spread of every demerit she ever received over the course of her formal education. Each of them set aside with little tags like she was so fucking proud of them. They were all for things like, “Unladylike behavior” or, “Skirt too short” or, “refuses to listen to authority”. I loved that spread so much.
2014 - Framingham Police released footage of Massachusetts resident Lindsey McNamara tossing raw bacon and sausage at officers in the police station. The 24-year-old walked into the police station armed with her delicacies in a Dunkin Donuts box. Police told reporters McNamara yelled, “It’s time to feed the pigs” before throwing the meat. [video]
this is a good enough reason for some people in the country to vote for a shitty party.
Please share this this post widely to help us get wide coverage of #saveilf on facebook and twitter @IlfSave At a Q&A with @Ed_Miliband this morning, he gave a solid and passionate commitment that @UKLabour *will* #saveIFL. We’re with you. — Trudie McGuinness (@trudiemc) January 26, 2015 @JuJuMarlow @IlfSave This morning Ed Miliband committed the… Continue Reading Does Ed Miliband Promise Labour Will #SaveILF?
Say what you will about the Avatar franchise, but remember that it started with a girl of colour calling out her brother for being sexist and ended with a multiracial queer couple walking hand in hand into the golden light of a new era, and there aren’t many shows around at the moment which can top that.
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
[Image: Jasper National Park, courtesy of Parks Canada].
[Image: A drone from DJI].
[Image: A drone from DJI].
[Image: A drone from DJI].
